Crane Begg

Graphics and Illustration

After graduating from Glasgow University in 1989 with a BSc Hons degree in Archaeology, Crane developed a career as a field archaeologist working predominately in the Fens of East Anglia with the occasional foray into the landscapes of Orkney, Islay, and the sand dunes of South-West Scotland. Crane also worked in the Annapurna Highlands of the Western Himalaya in Nepal, where, as expedition draftsman and surveyor he recorded the remains of forts, settlement sites and the ruins of Kohla Sombre, the ancestral settlement of the Tami-mai community.

It was during one particularly cold, damp winter in the Fens working as a Project Officer for the Cambridge Archaeological Unit that Crane decided working in an office had a certain attraction and he decided to become an illustrator. Over the subsequent 20 years, Crane developed skills in the traditional techniques of artefact illustration becoming highly skilled at prehistoric pottery and stone illustration. Since joining ORCA, Crane produces various digital graphics and is helping to develop ORCA’s and the Institute’s GIS capabilities integrating site plans digitised in AutoCAD into ArcMap for overall synthesis into the digital dataset for research and commercial projects.

Research InterestsCrane has a particular interest in landscape modelling and its visualisation and integration into GIS platforms for research and commercial applications and was a recent joint- recipient of the Richardson Award from the Geologists Association.